The Nature Conservancy purchased the 279-acre San Miguel River preserve near Placerville, Colo., because it supports a unique plant community featuring the rare narrowleaf cottonwood, the Colorado blue spruce and the thinleaf alder. (Photo Credit: Harold E. Malde, The Nature Conservancy)

Last November, voters across the country expressed their frustration over suburban sprawl and the traffic congestion and visual blight that accompany it by approving more than 120 ballot initiatives to conserve undeveloped land. The Clinton administration and a number of lawmakers support a broader federal role in land conservation, mainly through an increase in federal acquisition of private property for parks and other public land. Property-rights activists say such efforts waste taxpayers' money and put landowners under unfair and overwhelming pressure to sell their land. Meanwhile, state and local governments are acting on their own to conserve green space with “smart-growth” initiatives to limit new development, and citizen-run, nonprofit land trusts are sprouting up all over the country to buy up open land.